I realize the subject line is fairly generic, so appreciate if you’re looking at this. Overall the platform is powerful and very easy to use, but I’m looking to get the most out of the platform as a coach. Below is an example of some of my questions that I haven’t be able to find an answer to, so I’m hoping there’s a guide where I can self serve answers:
How to most efficiently onboard an athlete? I’m a little confused and my two early adopter athletes (coming from another platform) are confused. We are all listed as “Coaching”. Does that mean I’m coaching them or they are a coach?
How to create and publish plans? I’ve found how to create a plan (but haven’t yet), but once it’s created, I can see there’s a share option. Does the athlete need to be a follower or can I just send to their email? My coached athletes I want to see, but if someone just sees a plan, maybe I don’t want to see there stuff. Also it appears I can only create plans with a start date. Can I publish and have the athlete pick the END date (so the plan works backward)?
How can I become a coach in the tool (I noticed there’s a coach bubble at the top where athletes can reach out for assistance). Is that just built in if I’m a coach or do I need to enable that somehow?
Is it possible to group athletes I coach? With the two early adopters, but if I convert more of my athletes over, it would be nice to have groups
Are the prompts to have someone be an athlete built in or are they customizable?
I think that’ll give an idea as to some of the things I’m trying to figure out.
No need for any of that, not even to share the plan (that feature is so that other people can see your plan and so whatever they want with it). Once you are coaching them you can just drop a plan on their calendar on any date and all of the workouts will show up as expected.
I believe the dates on the plan tool are so that you can create “one-off” plans for a specific season with goal races in mind; I don’t see how they’re useful if designing a generic training plan for multiple uses.
I think that those are added manually and managed by @david.
There is a Groups feature that you can explore, but for your use case I think that Athlete tags are what you are looking for. On the Athletes page (click on your avatar on the sidebar) you can see your athletes and you can add tags to each one:
Thanks for all that. The one point of clarification is on the plans. Right now I sell static plans for athletes I don’t do 1:1 coaching for. I literally just publish a plan to them thru a link and it loads on their (other product) calendar.
In Intervals.icu anyone can follow or coach other athletes. Following someone means you can see their calendar and other stuff. Coaching someone means you can also make changes. The “Ask a coach” box at the top is populated with coaches who have asked to be on the list and your own coaches on Intervals.icu. So athletes you coach will see you in the list.
You should probably create a group for your athletes and add them to that. That makes it easy to communicate with everyone, ask to coach or follow people and so on.
Regarding plans as @tlgs says you can drag and drop a plan onto someone’s calendar to apply it. But you can also link athletes to a plan and update all of the calendars at once when you make changes:
Anyone that you’re coaching will be viewed.
You link a plan to an athlete, so no need to “share” their plan outside of the plan window.
If you have the END date, you can work backwards to calculate the start date.
Then you can publish from that date forward to the goal event/date.
You can roll out a week at a time, or longer
You can have a day it will auto rollout
For the TrainingPlan for someone I coach, it appears the working assumption is they are already on the platform. The way I’ve envisioned it working is that I would send them an email with a URL that would bring them to the plan, where they would create an intervals.icu account to load the plan. Does that functionality exist or something like it?
And, how does the start or end date work? When I setup the plan there’s a start date but if I’m randomly selling a plan 2 months from when I’m creating it does the person who gets the plan get to pick the start date?
Currently they need to be registered on the platform. But I think what you suggest (sending a link to signup and get a plan) is something I really should implement. Tx.
The start date is just so the calendar view of the plan will work. When you drop a plan on an athlete’s calendar the start date is wherever you dropped it. When you link an athlete to a plan then you can choose their start date. That makes most sense with auto rollout plans.
If you share a plan with someone they get it in their library and can drag and drop it onto their calendar whenever they like.
Thanks David that would be a huge difference maker. Workflow is basically that they would go to my website, find what they are looking for, check out and then I have automation on my website that would send them a link to the plan where they can setup and account and pull the plan onto their calendar.
The way it works, on the other platform is such that the plan has an individual GUID for the USER rather than the PLAN, so I can’t automate it… I then have to send them and email manually with a link to the plan. I hope you’d have either a PLAN UID only or a UID maybe that appends their email address (that they enter on my form or cart) and then I’d append the email to the GUID… but, just a plan UID is easier for me. Just called that out because I didn’t know if you would need an email address.
I’m also looking for this: to send an invite to an athlete and have a plan automatically shared with them rather than waiting for them to join, and then manually sharing it with them.
@david@DrWill I know it’s not possible in the app and it’s a feature request, but I wonder if possible thru API? This is important enough for me that I’d actually figure out how to get that done externally, if this is low on the product roadmap.
This seems possible with the API but is probably more work than most coaches will want to do. I think you could create an external application using oauth with intervals to get this done. The end user would be linked to intervals to login (which may include creating an account), and then once they approved access for the external application that app would have permissions and user id needed to call the share folder api.
Trust me, I don’t WANT to do it… I’d much rather it be in a platform. But, I want it enough that if it’s not in anyone’s roadmap I’d be willing to make the investment.
